


never forget the finding

by wintervioleteye (hawkguyed)



Series: one out of many and all of them the same [9]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Aaron Cross is Clint Barton-verse, Crossover, Gen, I can't believe I've found you, Memory Loss, or maybe some much more sinister, welcome to Project Outcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-12
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 20:25:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkguyed/pseuds/wintervioleteye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t need her to tell him who they’ve found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	never forget the finding

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you [lucdarling](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling) for reading through and making sure I don't Swiss-cheese my plots and everything.

She bursts into the room with three guards on her heels. It’s a clean room from the looks of it, white-washed walls and clean sheets on the few beds, a medical facility if she had to guess. Perfect place to lie low and patch up injuries, if given the chance, but Natasha doesn’t have time to do it, not with guards tailing her this closely. 

They’ll have to be dealt with first. 

The first guard is taken care of with a metal pan to the head, toppling out of sight behind a medical cart. Guard number two takes a needle to the neck while guard three has the worst luck of them all as she leaps and downs him with a perfectly executed head-scissors lock despite the wound on her thigh.

Their bodies are sprawled out across the infirmary floor and Natasha steps elegantly over them. 

She thinks she sees someone move out of a corner of her eye behind the curtains at the far end. Natasha instinctively settles into a defensive stance. Infirmary or not, it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.

The curtain shifts a little from some nonexistent wind and that’s when she sees the man, lying curled up in a bed by the window. 

Natasha hasn’t seen him in months, but she’d recognize her partner anywhere, even if he hasn’t shaved in forever (which he probably hasn’t anyway, not in a few days at least). The man slumped there looks exhausted, dark circles under his eyes and an IV in his arm, but she recognizes him. Apparently he’s never been able to kick that habit, back pressed up against the nearest secure surface, legs drawn close and making himself a smaller target.

The man is asleep on the cot just beside the window, clad in a hospital gown with a bandage on his arm, and it makes her heart break just a little to see him this way. He’s more bruised and battered than she’s ever seen him. 

He hasn’t woken up yet and if Natasha had to guess, it’s probably from some drug cocktail (He’s always hated the medical mumbo-jumbo) in the IV.

She calls his name softly. 

The archer she knows would have woken up in seconds, but this stranger that looks so much like Clint remains fast asleep, tucked under clean white sheets. 

Her fingers are inches away from the hastily patched cut on his forehead when the alarms go off, blaring throughout the complex. It’s her cue to get clear, and Natasha pulls away from the bedside despite the yearning to take him with her. She doesn’t have the time or equipment, not now, but she can bring some information with her back to SHIELD.

Natasha has just enough time to rifle through the nearby, locked filing cabinets and retrieve a file with the name ‘Aaron Cross’ printed across it. She slips out the window moments before guards kick the door open.

It’s a long and lonely flight back to New York. 

\--

Natasha stalks into Fury’s office later that night with a file tucked under a hand and a long gash along her upper thigh. The anger that’s etched onto her features obviously overrides any sort of exhaustion she might have had from a five hour flight and ten hour mission. She nearly flings the papers at the Director.

“Look what they _did_ to him!” 

It’s obvious that she’s read the file on the flight.

The photo tacked to the file with a flimsy paperclip is all too familiar. A face that has had the words missing in action stamped over it in bright red for the past fourteen-plus months. 

Fury reaches for it, single eye widening as he reads through the endless lines of reports. Medical examinations, psychological evaluations, physical tests. Blood work. Firing range scores. Treadstone. Blackbriar. _Outcome_.

He’s seen this once before, on a cocky, pain-in-the ass (and sorely missed, despite everyone’s insistent denial) archer who never misses no matter how far the target. “How long?” 

“Over a year.” Natasha finally takes a seat, adrenaline trading places with exhaustion. “He goes by Aaron Cross now.” 

“Brainwashing?” 

Natasha fixes him with a look. “Possible.” 

Fury’s single eye narrows. “Get Coulson.” 

Phil is alone when Natasha finds him, in his office with a stack of paperwork in front of him. There’s a coffee mug at his elbow instead of the usual Styrofoam cup that someone always brings. Natasha’s eyes catch on a dog-eared edge of a file mixed into the pile of haphazardly stacked folders.

She knows that file, she had brought it to him personally after everything had gone to hell. Apparently it’s never left his desk, no matter what sort of denial he puts up. 

“Phil.”

The agent looks up, and Natasha is struck by how awfully bone-tired the man looks, as if he’s been sleeping for the bare minimum of required hours in a day. It reminds her how much her partner is missed because it has always been the archer’s job (sometimes unsuccessfully) to distract the agent from paperwork and for some regrettably necessary sleep. 

“Can I help you, Natasha?” He doesn’t stop writing, with his pen scratching over the paper and eyes never leaving the report he’s working on. 

Natasha holds out a file. “We’ve found him.” 

He doesn’t need her to tell him who they’ve found. The pen slips from Phil’s fingers and clatters to the floor, forgotten as he stands.

“Clint.”


End file.
